1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus which may be advantageously incorporated in a facsimile machine or any other machine which requires an image reducing and enlarging function.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image processing apparatus is used for various purposes. For example, it may be used for reducing and/or enlarging the images obtained by an image sensor. It may be also used for performing .gamma.-control, color control, image sharpening and etc.
In a prior art image processing apparatus, image reduction and/or enlargement in the primary and secondary scanning directions is performed together at the time of storing the image data in a buffer memory or reading out the image data from the memory. Thus, the image processing apparatus requires a high-speed CPU for software processing or a large scale circuit for hardware processing, which results in a cost increase. This is particularly critical in the case of processing color images because different color sets of digitized image data (namely, a large amount of digitized image data) need to be processed.
Further, in the case of enlarging color images in both scanning direction at the time of writing the image data in the buffer memory, the capacity of the buffer memory must be large enough for storing a large amount of image data with a high efficiency and a high processing speed. The use of such a buffer memory will also lead to a cost increase.